Everyone is entitled to my opinion

Playing politics? I don’t buy it. The people of the UK are angry and will no longer be ignored.

2017-06-17T10:16:00.002-07:00

One can’t help but look at the Grenfell Tower inferno and ask why. Why was this allowed to happen? Both sides of the political spectrum have had their input although with the Conservatives being the ruling party for seven years they’re obviously fighting a difficult battle.

Labour, on the other hand, are the ones that are able to point the finger at their political opponents when it comes to looking for blame. In fact, some say Labour may have gone too far and are now entering the realms of gaining politically for this.

I refuse to accept this argument from anyone that blames Muslims for terrorism and looks to automatically put that responsibility at the door of every single Muslim. The Sun’s front page following Hillsborough looked for blame, trouble is it looked in the wrong areas.

Following a disaster, it is a natural reaction to look for someone to blame. It’s also the best time. Right now, since when it was first safe to do so, I shall imagine police and fire officers are raking through the debris looking for clues as to how the fire got to be so bad. They’re looking for blame. Investigative journalism should be the same.

I like everyone else first heard about the fire when I woke up on Wednesday morning. I put the radio on at 7 am Central European Time and heard that there was a fire at a tower block in West London. It sounded like they were giving it wall to wall coverage.

I drifted in and out of sleep but when I finally woke up properly I took a look at Twitter and it was full of the news. One thing that I saw being shared a lot was screenshots of a blog called the Grenfell Action Group. The post in action was dated on 20^th of November 2016.

The first sentence reads thus “It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders.” How prophetic.

The strong language goes on, you can read it for yourself if you wish but the last words of the blog are “They can’t say they haven’t been warned!” True enough.

If there are any positives to come out of this it is that the media aren’t telling the people what is going on, this is run by the people and you can’t hide from them, they are everywhere.

The people that you’re seeing on social media sharing their anger are the people that live in the area. I saw Andrea Leadsom being heckled, at least she had the guts to go there, by a local resident. These are the people who have every right to be getting angry over this. They’re politicising it and quite rightly.

Theresa May has handled this appallingly. Oh, how I bet she wishes she could go back a week when she was only a laughing stock for giving up her parliamentary majority. Now she’s a laughing stock for refusing to meet survivors due to security concerns. “Hold my crown” joked one Twitter correspondent as he commented on how the 91-year-old monarch showed no such cowardice.

Obviously, Jeremy Corbyn has come in for a bit of stick for also politicising it. The people of that area are feeling like no-one is listening to them. Corbyn visiting them at the very least has given them hope. He has only echoed their concerns. People have died, the survivors want answers. Corbyn telling them that he will strive to find those answers is what they want to hear.

Corbyn’s record speaks for itself, he’ll support these people and he’ll get the answers they seek.

Early indications show that the cladding is responsible for why the fire spread so quickly. The reason why the cladding was necessary is because the building looked “ugly” for those that had to look from their £2 million “pad”. I wonder if they’re enjoying the view today?

Someone has already done a bit of investigative journalism on this and apparently each piece of this cladding cost £2 less than its less flammable equivalent, making a total saving of £5,000.

£5,000? Is that the price of safety? Is this the price of life? I wonder how much per person that will work out to be once the final death toll is announced. The death toll currently stands at 58 so at the moment it’s a saving of about £86.20 per person.

Ruth Davidson will be leader of the Conservative Party by the end of the year.

2017-06-10T04:49:00.000-07:00

So the Tories will join with the DUP, and the number of seats for the government is 328, a majority of just six.

Labour and anyone that is anti-Tory are celebrating, yet some people are pointing out that this is silly as the Tories won.

First lets look at the positives for The Tories.

They gained seats in Scotland. It seems like, right now, that the referendum 2.0 on Scottish independence has been cancelled.

I think this is on hold. They had a ref in 2013, the SNP lost but in the GE in 2015 they made massive gains winning, what, 56 seats?

Even pre-Brexit there were calls for another ref, Brexit hasn't happened yet so if it doesn't go the way the Scots want there called be calls for a second ref.

For now the Tories will have taken the gains they made in Scotland had they been offered them pre the result.

In the election overall the Tories did increase their share. The collapse of UKIP plus the gains in Scotland and collecting a few gains in England helped with this.

There are positives for the Tories in this.

However when you stack them up against their negatives they're insignificant.

Going into this election the Tory share of seats was 331. If your share is 325 you only need one more seat to be the majority in the house of 650 seats.

Labour had a share of 232, 99 fewer.

Why this is significant is because Labour would never have been in with a chance of been able to gain power to make a challenge had the Tories lost some angry dissatisfied rebel MPs. Labour were in a weak position.

May called this election because she deemed Labour to be weak so she wanted to increase her share, give herself five more years of power and have the mandate of delivering whatever type of Brexit she wanted.

She gambled and she lost.

So let me explain why this is bad for her.

Within the Tory Party you have traditional Tories who are pro-fox hunting, anti-gay right wing, probably a little bit racist. This is a minority. Most Tories are fairly liberal in comparison.

In Scotland the leader of the Scottish Tories, Ruth Davidson, is herself gay. It really must stick in the craw for some Tories to have a homosexual running their campaign north of the border.

Not quite winning enough seats means the Tories have to look to the other parties, offer them a chance at helping them form a government.

In 2010 they had the same situation and did a deal with the Liberals. There are many liberal supporters in the Tories so it isn't too hard to find common ground.

The Liberals ran a campaign appealing to the younger vote and those that took that bait only to see them betray those who voted for them.

As I have already alluded the Tory Party is a broad spectrum, there are some liberals in there but there are also your traditional Conservatives.

The party most likened to the Tories are the DUP. Completely believe in the union, the Northern Irish Conservatives fully support Brexit from a further right wing point of view than some Conservatives will feel comfortable with.

The best thing you can say about them is they're evangelical christians.... no, that really is the best thing.

They're homophobic, they make no secret about that, are they happy about Ruth Davidson, is she happy about them?

The DUP are answerable to their voters, they can't ditch their manifesto pledges.

If the Tories shift too far to the right and the opposition Labour offers a fairer Brexit for the country you could see some Tories leaving the party, becoming independents just to prop-up Labour and getting a better deal.

This General Election has unquestionably made Theresa May weaker. Her leadership is being propped up by the most right wing party in British Politics.

Step forward Ruth Davidson. If her ambition was to ever be leader of the Tory Party she will get no better chance.

She has shown she can deal with the SNP, shown she can lead and will have a lot of support within the left of the party.

She can get a good deal with the EU for Scottish supporters and nullify any future referendum threat.

She is left wing enough that she can claim the now deserted centre ground of British politics.

Conspiracy theory special: Is Donald Trump an alien?

2017-02-10T16:19:00.000-08:00

No, he isn't an alien, the title was just an excuse to get your attention although it is an interesting concept and some could use the idea as a metaphor.

Some people think he is an alien, I reckon David Icke probably does. As you probably are aware there are people that think the world is being rule by lizards that wear masks.

Its apparently all down to some world order that controls everything. Anyone in a position of power is either an alien or is aware that they exist.

Its a completely crazy conspiracy theory.

One of my favourite conspiracy theories is that of Nostradamus. He was the apparent 16th century soothsayer that is said to have foreseen such events as the Nazis rise to power under a peasant leader, 'Hister' and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.

This, like all conspiracy theories, obviously doesn't come without its cynics. A lot of people ask why wasn't anyone warning people prior to 9/11 as to what Nostradamus warned. Ah, say his supporters, you don't see what he was trying to say until after the event making the meaning impossible to translate.

Another conspiracy theory I want to talk about is people who see Jesus in their toast. Stay with me, this is going somewhere.

Its not just their toast, they see his face in a number of things, anything with a pattern could potentially have a face, in theory, is what the critics say.

This theory could too be attributed to Nostradamus. After the event that he "predicted" you read one of his theories and you assign it to the said event.

I do believe that Nostradamus never said that his doctrines were predictions and instead was just writing stories although there is apparently evidence to contradict this, some believe that he definitely did.

Either way, whether he did or didn't this is about how we see it and what we can learn from this.

Now back to Trump being an alien. What a divisive guy. Trump's popularity is through the roof with his supporters but with others he couldn't be lower.

Looking back across the pond at Europe and again we have divisive issue in Brexit, in fact you could say we have a wider issue at hand and that is that we could be on the verge of the break up of the EU.

It seems that right now relations between communities, political parties, countries and people with different beliefs are at an all time low. I say that but I'm sure things have been worse in the past but in my lifetime this is the worst it has been.

For me, as I'm sure it is for many others, this is sad to see. All I want is for everyone to get on, you don't all have to agree, just stop the hate and the fear.

Now comes the point.

Have you ever seen a movie, really liked it and then watched it again only to enjoy more because you know what its saying?

I have, Arrival.

First of all its such an intelligent movie. The way it presents and unravels the plot is so clever.

I won't spoil it for you in case you haven't seen it but lets just say its the correct movie for the modern time.

Its like the director is some sort of Nostradamus, he knew the movie we would need for this time and decided to make it for when we'd need it.

I think its more likely the case that I just happen to see parallels with the movie and the current world we live in.

What is racism? Or, in this case, if you want to call it what it is then it's xenophobia?

2017-02-04T12:39:00.001-08:00

This afternoon I went to an Irish bar in Barcelona to watch England in the rugby against the French.

Most of the people in there were Catalan, French, Irish, Scottish, Spanish or Welsh, basically they were against the English.

I was one of three, maybe four English fans in there and of those other fans I was the loudest throughout.

If France scored a point there were loud cheers from everyone, if England scored my cries of "Come On England" drowned out any applause from anyone else.

I stayed for a few pints after the game, not one person came up to me to say anything.

I would have expected one or people to perhaps say "good game mate, well done" as I did when England lost to Wales in the World Cup fifteen months ago.

Before the game Ireland lost to Scotland. Did the Irish fans say to well done to their Scottish counterparts after their defeat?

Why do I get treated differently just because I support England?

Everyone wanted us to lose. A few people did talk to me during the game but once the result was delivered, nada.

Doesn't it say something about my character that I was happy to stay very loudly throughout in the bar and take whatever result that was delivered.

To be honest right now I'm a little unhappy that we won because had we of lost at least I could say I was happy to be there and congratulate the victors whatever.

There was a guy wearing a French Rugby shirt who would have got my congratulations had they have won. As they didn't there was nothing I could say.

I'm just a bit fed up with being victimised just because I'm an Englishman that happens to believe in a United Ireland, Independence for Scotland and and whatever the majority of the Welsh want but I respect their right for their language to be taught in their schools for it it to be their "national", if that's what they want, language.

But when it comes to England versus ....... then, as an Englishman, I enact my right to support England.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

If you think Trump supporters are just white, working class males in their 40s that believe Jesus founded America then you're wrong

2017-01-27T05:34:00.001-08:00

You have to admit, these are interesting times that we live in. Easy for me to say, of course. I'm a white, some would say middle class, although I would say working class, straight male and I live in Spain, an ally of the US.

I say ally but you wouldn't think it to hear what some Spanish politicians have said about the Donald after his administration removed the Spanish language from the US government website.

I commend the Spanish politicians, something I don't do very often, for their speaking out against Trump's actions.

We all sit eagerly awaiting news of Trump's next move, will it be that he has ordered the department of education to change the curriculum to teach that the Sun revolves around the Earth, I shouldn't joke, it is coming.

Even though I am just a white, working class straight male living in Spain I do quite rightly still care.

I care that pretty soon many US citizens will not have affordable healthcare, I care that immigrants living in the US will feel even more victimised than they do already and I care that if a woman has a sexual relationship with a man and happens to fall pregnant then that woman loses the right to have a say over her own body.

I don't claim to know squat about Obamacare, in fact many people tell me it's a mess but if you think Trump is going to improve the situation for families and deliver then you need a wake-up call.

I suspect, or rather I know that in the US there are people like me, many concerned citizens. They're of course in the thick of it.

Last weekend saw action from women right around the world and all over the States who sought to #Resist the Trump.

On Wednesday in downtown Washington, just a few blocks from the White House some protesters scaled a crane in order to deliver their message. One amazing picture had the White House in the foreground with the crane behind showing just how close the two were.

And perhaps the most vocal message came on Twitter with a new parodyish account, @RogueNasa, delivering the truth to Trump's bullshit.

As I'm writing this article I've gone to look at their Twitter account to see this message. I've not mastered putting pictures on my blog just yet but in case I don't here is what the tweet says.

"Have some free time? Help archive all you can on NASA.gov and EPA.gov"

They're asking for people to archive their websites "just in case" they're ordered to remove anything.

Scary times we're living in, interesting but very very scary.

On Wednesday Trump signed another in a long line of executive orders. On this occasion, it was for there to be a wall along the US' southern border with Mexico.

The distance of the border is roughly the same distance from the very most northern point of the westernmost isle in Scotland all the way down to Rome in Italy.

That's an absolutely insane distance, how exactly is that going to be policed even if you do get past the impossible task of building the damn thing!?

The Mexican president was due to meet with Trump next week but after the announcement of the wall, Enrique Peña Nieto has cancelled the meeting.

Resistance is what's needed #Resist #Resist #Resist

Today the British PM, Teresa May, is to be the first foreign leader to meet with Trump. As she is technically "my leader" I am still a British citizen, I'd prefer it if she resisted him too.

A lot of British political commentators are concerned about how the UK's 'special relationship' with the US will come out of this.

Resisting Trump does not mean we resist the US and I think it would speak volumes if we made that point clear.

This is why it is important to resist, have your voice heard and let people know what you're thinking and let them know that they do have a choice and if they were to resist that they wouldn't be alone.

I wonder how Trump will be remembered? Many liken him to Hitler, I think the difference is that Hitler believed what he was saying, Trump doesn't.

Hitler is largely remembered as being the psychopath that he was, he absolutely had to rid Germany and then Europe and then eventually the world, had he got that far, of jews as that was what he had managed to convince himself of what needed to happen.

Hitler's desire was perfection as he saw it.

Trump, in contrast, doesn't believe it and for that he is different. Trump is the metaphorical school yard idiot that will do anything his chums tell him to, just so he can be allowed to remain in their circle of friends. They have no real value for him or desire to have him around, they just like the stupid things he does.

This is Trump. He started to criticise Obama because it made him popular, he then, with this not being enough, was dared to run for President, how would he gain popularity? Oh, I know, we can pick on some people, let's do that....

Trump is now being willed on by the crackpot nutjobs within his administration, people like white supremacist, Steve Bannon, these are now the people daring Trump to do things, these people are the problem and what's worse is these people are like Hitler, these people do believe the US, North America and eventually the world needs to be rid of Muslims.

Desire for people like Bannon is the same for Hitler, perfection as they see it. If you don't fall within that remit then you're gone.

With Hitler you needed to be a heterosexual, able bodied aryan. White skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, not Jewish and that is it, sort of.

With Bannon you need to be the same, give or take the odd distinguishing feature or minority.

One of Hitler's qualities, he did have some, ignoring the fascism, was that he was a great orator, in fact we probably haven't seen anyone as good at speaking, at least in political circles, as he was since his infamous speeches, formally at the Circus Krone and more latterly at Nurnberg.

Trump isn't in the same league as Hitler oratorically, although very good at public speaking Trump is just a populist, tells the people what they want to hear, listening to Hitler speak was like being hypnotised.

However he doesn't need to be as good as Hitler, he is not competing with him, he needs to be better or at least as good as his rivals.

And to his followers that is exactly what he is.

The Trump administration has, in separate parts, everything that Hitler had and the good thing for them is that no-one can say "that's Hitler". They can't pinpoint one person and say that is 'Hitler' but he is in there.

Not every Trump follower was, is or ever will be a white supremacist. They don't all believe that Jesus discovered America and the the world was discovered five thousand years ago, or whatever the number of years is this week.

Adolf Hitler and his Nazis were never really democratically elected, it's debatable, some would say they were but really they bullied their way to the Reichstag until they got what they wanted.

Trump was democratically elected and although people will bleat on about how he never won the popular vote when has that ever mattered in the past? Trump won the system that was being played, the electoral college is a difficult complicated system to understand so I'm not going to bother to explain.

Complete annihilation of the Jewish 'race' was never on the cards on day one, hence the name "final solution". It probably was for Hitler, by the time he ended his service in the German army at the end of World War One he was talking about ridding Germany of anyone that wasn't a pure German.

He was probably a fully converted anti-Semitic by the time he got to Munich from his Austrian homeland in 1914 where he'd spent the past seven years sleeping rough on the streets of Vienna growing more and more resentful of the Jews and their wealth.

That's what racism is, it plants itself like a tiny seed in a person's mind and the more hard luck Hitler had trying to make his way as an artist the more resentful towards them he became. Never mind the fact that he was best friends with a Jew, who was also sleeping rough, whilst in Vienna.

Shortly after Hitler gained power as Chancellor, a position he pretty much stole, a so called but never proven "false flag" arson attack saw the Reichstag burn.

As the fire burned the police conducted a search of the building and found a Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, who owned up to the fire. He was arrested, tried and then assassinated.

It was said that on the morning of the fire Hitler was happier than his followers had seen him for weeks.

Eighteen months later the death of President Hindenburg gave Hitler the clear path to dictatorship.

For many people within Trump's administration outside of the white supremacist circle, I include Trump in this as I have said, he doesn't believe what he says, I have no doubt that the plan is not to annihilate anyone.

That's not Trump's style, he doesn't want a solution, he wants the problems to remain so that he can continue to criticise them and this way he's popularity should remain fairly high, at least for a while.

That's the plan for now at least.

People have spoken about Trump being impeached, this won't help unless he takes his white-sheet wearing pals with him. In fact it could actually be the worst case scenario.

Just who will they replace him with, that's the next question? Trump is actually in this case not necessarily the problem. The people that surround him are.

What needs to happen is like what happened with the Penguin in film Batman Returns. He was the Trump of 20 years ago, short, fat and tiny hands not to mention incredibly popular with the people.

He was running for mayor of Gotham and as he was Batman's enemy he had people believing that the capped crusader was some sort of bad guy.

This was until Batman managed to record the Penguin badmouthing the people, he then played it over him talking in front of a crowd and the veil fell away and the people saw him for who he was.

How perfect if we could record a Trump administration meeting with them all slating the people, over to you, Wikileaks.

The white supremacists want what they perceive to be "perfection".

But how long will it be that Trump has to deliver something so big that it is what's needed to prevent his popularity slipping?

Trump will make changes but as we know nothing will improve as those changes won't be what is needed.

Eventually people will be calling for a register of Muslims, for Muslims to wear identification tags so they can be spotted and won't be so much of a threat.

How long will it be for the narcissist Trump who is so desperate to be liked that to maintain his popularity he has to ban anyone with brown skin from riding public transport?

He can do it now if he wants, who is going to stop him? If this is what he feels he needs to do to keep his popularity ratings up then he will be willing to do anything.

It never starts with concentration camps and genocides, that's only ever where it ends.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The British people will reap what they sow

2016-08-24T09:14:00.001-07:00

Let's face facts, British politics is pretty low right now. Apart from nothing else, the whole thing is nothing more than a reality TV show, a popularity contest.

Looking back to the dark days of the EU Referendum, which feels like years ago now, the whole debate was a shambles. Both sides were a joke.

They both used the argument of "this is what Hitler would have wanted and therefore you should vote opposite to that". Adolf Hitler wanting something to happen, as bad as he was, isn't a prerequisite for us wanting the opposite.

Hitler liked sun-shine, mountains, Wagner, dogs, stories about cowboys and indians along with the laughter and smiles of children. Does Hitler liking these things make anyone who also liked them a bad person?

He also had a distinct hatred of jews, black people, disabled people, homosexuals, gypsies.... anyone that didn't fit into his image of how the ideal person should look and behave. Ironically this included the man himself but that's another story.

Everyone knows Hitler is bad, wanting the same thing as him is bad news, right?

Hitler's deep rooted hatred of these things makes him a bad person. Anyone else that has a hatred for those things is also bad, not because Hitler wanted them but because they are bad in themself.

That's what they tried to make us think. The dumbed down version of politics now is use this, relate it to this and it equals bad.

This worked incredibly well for the Leave campaign. Being in the EU means we have to do this, this and this, therefore it's bad news and we should leave.

The main reason given was immigration. The big bad word. It's a divisive word. If you're pro-immigration then you're a "looney lefty", if you're anti-immigration you're a far right fascist. See, assign this to this and you get this.

In actual fact somewhere in the middle is true.

He who wins the immigration debate wins the vote.

Let's take a look at this. It's a real concern for many people, jobs are under threat (figures mean nothing, especially when those figures are skewed by zero hour contracts, what are the people on the street feeling?) School places are in high demand, getting yourself a local GP or dentist is becoming harder and harder. These places are low as it is, if all you hear is that 350 million immigrants are ready to come from the EU to flood your town aren't you going to be worried?

It's not about race or nationality, if 350 million British people lived in some other country but we had a vote in the same circumstances to allow them back in how would you vote?

Although I must admit I do find it hard how anyone who voted to leave the EU can then go on to have five kids. What if every couple had five kids? Worrying, no?

This debate then gets hijacked by far right nationalist groups like Britain First who add in things like traditional British values are being wiped away and then anyone who mentions they're concerned with immigration, for the previous reasons like jobs etc, and they then get wrongly labelled racist.

There is more to it than just that but I don't want to get bogged down on a blog about immigration, I'm just trying to point out it's not as simple as anti-immigration means racist and if you're pro-immigration you're a "looney lefty".

The other main story within British politics this summer is Jeremy Corbyn. This guy really divides opinion. Politics used to be about Labour vs Conservative but now it's about traditional socialist labour vs new labour vs centralist conservatism vs right wing light conservatism vs UKIP. Chuck in the Lib Dems, Plaid and the SNP and we could soon find ourselves needing an FA Cup style knock-out competition to determine whom we should have in power.

Labour is so divided right now, it's effectively five parties.

It was a genius masterstroke by Margret Thatcher who said "Tony Blair was my greatest creation", he was her gift to us.

New Labour killed Labour. The Scots and the Welsh were turned off by his politics so their national parties rose to popularity. Losing that much needed support killed any chance of Labour winning the last election.

Who else did well in that election, UKIP, that's who. New Labour refused to address the immigration problem. Traditional Labour voters abandoned generations of voting Labour because they saw UKIP addressing that problem.

Any Labour member will know that the membership card contains the word socialist. Tony Blair just isn't a socialist. If you want to argue that point with me then you may as well be sitting in front of me trying to argue the Earth is flat (these people are on the rise), I'll listen to you but it's only to humour you because I'm polite.

Because of this many socialists abandoned the Labour Party to join smaller fringe parties, mainly the Greens.

Last week Jeremy Corbyn travelled from London to Newcastle via Virgin Rail. A young journalist who is doing volunteer PR work for Corbyn's team wanted to do a piece on him for the Guardian.

The point was to talk about the railways and how they're underfunded and in what a poor state they're in under private ownership.

When the article was published on the Guardian's website it contained a short video of Corbyn stating that the train was "ram packed" and there were not enough seats available for everyone.

However yesterday Virgin Rail released CCTV footage showing Corbyn walking through the train walking past empty seats.

Now at no point does Corbyn say that there were "no seats" for him to sit on. Some will dispute this of course, instead of doing that just provide the proof.

What he does say is that the train was "ram-packed". Now could it be that Corbyn, a man of integrity decided to find a space on the train and wait to see, after everyone else had gotten on, where he, along with his team (<important) could sit?

So, Corbyn boards the train and instead of clambering like an animal to find himself a seat he instead moves through the train, passing empty seats, to find a space on the train, allowing everyone else to board with the intention being that he will take an empty seat if/when available.

Now, important bit from earlier comes in here. He wouldn't just want one seat for himself, he'll want to sit with his team. It has later come out that he wanted to sit with his wife, the bastard!

So why does Corbyn make the point of not taking any old seat and then moan about there being "no seats" (he never said that) available to him?

I cant find it now and while its not necessarily important that I do some will say it is but I'm sure I heard him say something along the lines of "I'm a civil servant, is it fair that tax payers pay for me to have a seat while they have to stand?"

That would explain him passing through the empty seats. He's happy to let the seats go spare to everyone else and then if he can find one for himself after everyone else has one then he will.

45 minutes after boarding the train a seat became available.

Worst case scenario is that Corbyn lied. And what? It's not as if he was trying to claim money back, he was highlighting the fact that there weren't enough seats for everyone.

I want the leader of the opposition pointing that out.

He was pointing out the poor state of our railways, or are they fantastic?

How well would that go down if there was footage of others standing or sitting on the floor while Corbyn is filmed in a seat saying there aren't enough seats?

The issue is not "Corbyn couldn't find an empty seat" something that he never said, it was that the train was "ram packed". This is something that others, who were on the same train, have claimed.

I want CCTV footage of say ten minutes into the journey. I assume Virgin Rail have that? I want CCTV footage of each carriage at exactly the same time. Then we can count how many seats there were free.

Yesterday Channel 4 news reported that Health Minister Jeremy Hunt lied about having enough money for a '7-day NHS'. Oh, what's that, you didn't hear about it? Is that because we're arguing about train seats?

Today Corbyn had a press conference talking about the NHS, what's on the news? That he reacted "angrily" to a question about Train Gate.

Did you know that last week Richard Branson's health private health company, Virgin Health, gained ownership of yet another health trust. Our NHS slowly being sold away bit by bit. I know it's boring, it's not as cut and dried or easy to digest and get your head around as could Corbyn have had a seat or not but I think it's far more important, no?

British politics is just a popularity contest nowadays. Give it to me in bite sizes, I don't want anything too big or too much for me to have to care about. I want something easy to tackle, I want something that is easy for me to choose the side of. Yes, I don't want the Tories selling off our health service but I'd rather talk about Corbyn's train seat as I don't like him.

You'll care when it's too late for you to care. It might not even be in your lifetime but it will happen.

When you find yourself having a poor run of luck, being made redundant by your company and you can't get a GP appointment. Not because of immigrants, which by the way will still be paddled out as being the reason your luck is so bad, but because you can't afford it as Virgin Health Care is too expensive for you to pay for.

New Year Challenge

2016-01-01T06:37:00.001-08:00

New Year is scary, we set ourselves ridiculously unobtainable goals that we can never achieve. We're all like "I'm going to go to the gym and get fit" or "I'm going to write that book" or how about "I'm going to relocate to another country", what idiot would do that one!?

We call them New Years Resolutions, as if the start of January is going to be different to the start of any other month, or even this year is going to be different to any other year, when we subscribed to the gym membership.

I'm not criticising, don't worry. I'm as guilty at this as anyone. I'm always setting myself a target I know I can't achieve, no more tweeting Piers Morgan or David Cameron offensive tweets, trust me, I'll never be able to stop, but this year I thought "what if I did something different?".

I've still got my usual "NY ressies", 'keep a diary'? Haha, as if! 'Lead by example', me!? No chance!

Those will come down with the Christmas decs in early Jan but what I will try and achieve is one year, twelve months, one challenge every month. I'm insane. It's only 31 days max, if I can't do this then what hope have I got of changing anything for good?

This month, January - Give up social networking. I know, breathing would have been an easier choice.

I can sense that you can see a flaw with this, I'm blogging, that's a form of social networking but bear with me.

I'm doing these challenges as a form of bettering myself, I use Facebook and Twitter too much to the extent that they become a deterrent or a drug so those are going to be my "cold turkey" for the month of January.

It should be interesting. There are some positives to come from my social network usage, as a writer and a self proclaimed occasionally funny guy I do come up with something witty from time to time.

Through my Twitter account I just ordered my "Tweet Archive*" that shows me my entire tweet history. I'm reading back through them and I'm in stitches, ah the memories.

So me not social networking for a month could have a negative affect on this. What I can do instead is keep a note of this and through that I may be able to work on that diary I was talking about. So I still get the creative experience which is good.

I currently have a challenge for each month of the year, I'm not letting you know what they are until the month begins, but I'm interested if anyone has any ideas, get in touch.

Leave a comment below, contact me through Facebook or Twitter, I'll read it in February or email me at pauljarvis5001@hotmail.com

What happens if I fail? Nothing, I log that I failed, I get back up and I carry on.

If, for example I get to January the 10th and I decide that I can't survive without looking at Twitter and then I do take a peek then I'm not going to call the whole thing off.

I'll make that part of the story and carry on. If I decide that I can't log on to Twitter at least once a day well then so be it, all part of the story.

I'm not doing this for anyone else, I'm doing it for the betterment of myself. I'm not doing it for starving African kids who couldn't give a toss if I logged into Twitter or not.

I'm also not going to lie, if I do it I do it, if I don't then who cares. That'd be like playing FIFA on the Playstation, losing and then turning it off until you win.

I obviously can't share this blog very much so I'd appreciate any help on that, especially this month.

You can still message me, I don't need to log into to Facebook to view my messages.

I guess what I'm getting at is it's not about communication or even networking, it's about my crave for information, I'm constantly looking for updates or information but this month I'm cutting that out.

I can still use Instagram, for posting pictures, and I can still use Timehop, which shows you your social network history from the day your looking at it. From these two apps I can share them on both Facebook and Twitter so you may see something from me pop up from time to time.

Why am I still using Timehop and Instagram? Because I'm trying to cut out the drug of which I'm reliant, I'm not reliant on Instagram or Timehop.

What will I do instead, I shall imagine Wikipedia's shares will increase, that's a joke, Wikipedia doesn't have shares. I love reading Wikipedia.

I'll write more, bounce ideas around in my own head and keep a log/journal of them.

I may even go outside, who knows?

*To get you Tweet Archive, log into your Twitter account on a computer, click on your profile badge on the top right hand of the screen, this brings up a menu, click 'Settings' and when in the next screen click Request Archive', or words to that affect. Imagine David Cameron doing this, it'd be like reading a fictional novel.

11 September 1714

2015-09-13T07:00:00.001-07:00

The meaning of this date around the world is one of dread and terror. Whenever someone mentions this date as in "Oh, we meeting for a drink on the 11th of September?" we instantly think of that awful day in 2001. It'll no longer be just another day.

In Barcelona it is a day that means something quite different. The events of that day over 300 years ago are remembered by the Catalan people in a show of defiance.

It began with the Spanish War Of Succession, a major European Conflict spanning 1701-1714. It started with the death of Charles II, the last Hapsburg King of Spain whose Empire spanned the globe.

Charles' choice of heir to his throne was Phillip V of Spain but it was not without facing resistance from other nations throughout Europe.

Philip was favoured by the Bourbon king of France, Louis the XIV, his Grandfather, who had his own aspirations for dominance.

Game of Thrones enough for you yet?

A number of other nations were against this alliance, among them were England and Scotland who from 1707 formed the United Kingdom, The Austrian Empire, The Netherlands, Portugal, the Spanish loyal to Charles and a little country to the North East of the Iberian peninsula called Catalonia.

With the city of Barcelona laying at it's heart, it enjoyed good Mediterranean trade to the East; the mountainous region with its rolling hillsides also saw the threat of a France/Spain alliance.

In 1701 these countries signed an alliance at The Hague in the Netherlands before declaring war on France and Spain

After 13 years of war the British and the Dutch made peace with Spain and France in the Treaty of Utrecht, leaving Catalonia to fight on alone.

With growing strength the Spanish armies moved further and further inwards of Catalonia until they were eventually surrounding the capital City of Barcelona.

14 months went by until the morning of 11th of September 1714 when the Spanish invaded the city and butchered all 10,000 Catalan troops inside.

Catalonia was no longer separate from Spain.

Catalan nationalism has been on the rise over recent years.

Since 2012 it's been seen as a popular day of protest in support of Catalonia becoming a separate state from Spain once more. Hundreds of thousands of people have made their way on to the streets, carrying their Senyeras and Independence flags.

However, the most remarkable protest was in 2013 when a 300 mile human chain, known as the Catalan Way was created from the Catalan border with France at Le Perthus in the North, all the way to the southern tip of Catalonia, Alcanar. It was said to involve 1.3million people.

What makes this year so special is that in just sixteen days Catalans go to the polls to decide their Independence.

I say special. This has happened before. In 2012, there was overwhelming support for independence with around 80% voting for, I believe that those who didn't vote 'yes' voted instead for Catalonia to become a recognised state within Spain. This vote was not recognised by Spain.

There now appears to be a tug of war in the Catalan independence debate between the Catalan Parliament. I think it'll happen eventually but only in baby steps. Catalonia now seems to be saying they want to set up things like their own government department and even an Army.

If they're only talking about doing that now then who knows how far away independence is? Someone I spoke to said that it could be as little as 18 months away.

Whilst I doubt that I really hope it happens. Catalonia is not Spain. That's a popular message graffitied on walls. They're an entirely different people. Imagine if Germany and Poland were still a joint nation, same thing here.

Pep Guardiola, the former Barcelona player and treble-winning coach, is a vehement supporter of independence saying that he would have played for The Catalan national team if he had been given the chance. Staying in the world of football, the whole debate heated up this week with Barca central defender Gerrard Pique said to have sent a mischievous tweet gloating over a Real Madrid playing friend at his team's treble success last season.

The tweet was blown out of proportion by the media and Pique called a press conference yesterday explaining his position. The rivalry between Real Madrid and Barcelona is only intensified by the independence debate. Barca are staunch supporters of Catalan Nationalism and events in support of Independence are held at the Camp Nou.

One thing that is offered up within the debate is what would happen to FC Barcelona? Would they continue to play in Spain's La Liga?

Personally I can't see any reason why not. Barcelona is La Liga and vice versa. It's this question that helps define the case for Independence. FC Barcelona and La Liga are intwined within each other's cultures. Catalonia and Spain are not. Oh and Real Madrid are in town on Saturday playing away at Espanyol.

The big question in all this of course is will Catalonia get it's independence before they finish the Segreda Familia?

The race is on....

OUTRAGE!! Read all about it!

2015-09-04T17:59:00.001-07:00

We all saw it etc...

What do you reckon is worse?

Scenario A) Katie Hopkins, in her article 'Rescue Boats, I'd use Gunships To Stop Migrants', on the 17th of April, perhaps prophetically, that she doesn't care about bodies floating in the water...

Scenario B) Using the image of a young child's body floating in the water to sell newspapers?

The Sun newspaper did both.

Disaster porn sells, we learnt this on September 11th 2001 and then remember Roaul Moat?

I vividy remember that Friday evening. Everyone was on Facebook, including me, commenting while glued to either Sky News or the BBC News 24.

When does the important task of news broadcasting become the less important task of collecting profit?

If you only got your news from the Sun then you'd think the war in Syria started last week, not three years ago.

It's a shame that it took the death of young Aylan Kurdi before the British press thought it was important to act.

The Sun's headline on Thursday was "Mr Cameron, summer is over ...now deal with the biggest crisis facing Europe since WW2" and it was accompanied by two pictures. The one on the left, a baby born in a Hungarian train station on Wednesday and on the right a picture of a police? officer carrying young Aylan's limp, lifeless body.

On Friday they ran a 'crisis campaign' with the headline "For Aylan", detailng 'YOU can aid kids like tragic tot'.

On Saturday, this was followed by self-congratulation of helping raise £350,000 for the 'Help the Children's' campaign along with a smiling picture of Aylan in happier times. This was accompanied by the 'For Aylan' article. I'm sure his suffering family are delighted that his picture is being used as a pawn in a propaganda war.

And you just know they thought "I wonder if he had a mobile...... Oh damn, we don't do that anymore!"

I was wondering what news they were trying to bury?

Then, last night..... News came out that David Cameron wants to have another vote to bomb Syria.

This is a joke, right?

This will need to go through a vote in Parliament; the last time that happened was in 2013. Cameron was all for dropping bombs on Syria but it didn't make the cut.

So, I'm thinking to myself "Why the sudden outrage from the Tories right wing press?Where have they been for the last three years of the Syrian war? And why now?!"

Beautifully done.

First you have to create a fear of migrants, make people reluctant to take "them" in. "Swarm of migrants". Then you get the press to tell every that we need to start taking "them" in.

But then there's going to be opposition for this from the far right and the questions are asked, "How many more will we have to take?"

It's a worry, I know. Too many migrants, we're full up. There's six inches of space on the Isle of Wight but that'll soon be gone.

We can't leave the migrants to die, not now that a three year old boy has died in such distressing circumstances. We didn't realise people were dying, we just thought they were playing kiss-chase around Europe.

So this is the problem; we can't leave them to die. We need to take in as many as we can but once we're full, we're full. But, we'll be full up and people will still be dying.

What to do?

The only thing to do is to bomb Syria.

How long until someone suggests that ISIS are a few months away from getting their hands on WMD, I wonder?

And, that's not all. The Guardian today is running a story that Cameron 'hinted at' (it's noncommittal so that Cameron doesn't need to confirm or deny anything) that he might abandon the vote to bomb Syria if Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leader race. A last ditched attempt to prevent people from voting Corbyn.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph is running a story that Corbyn will block help going to Syria.

We can't have someone opposing government austerity measures, now can we?

Don't buy the press, read me instead. I'll tell you what's REALLY going on.

The Ugly Subject Of Two People Wanting To Do Something Together That You Don't Like Despite It Not Affecting You In Any Way

2015-09-02T12:14:00.001-07:00

So we've got this American, what is she, a clerk? Who is refusing to marry homosexual couples in her courthouse in the states. I believe it's in the state of Kentucky, famous for fried chicken and the derby.

Usually this would be me having a rant about why the whole of the UK is showing double standards because it doesn't want to go to war with the states over their religious extremism but we do when Muslims do it. It's the pork thing, isn't it? Pork makes all the difference.

So yeah basically she's a devout Christian and because of that she feels she can't encourage the act of love between same sex couples. Nothing wrong with that, it's an opinion and remember people just because someone's opinion offends someone else doesn't mean they're not entitled to that opinion.

I wasn't sure what was totally going on here, I mean I wasn't sure if she was employed by the American government, even at local level, or if she was somehow freelance. I used to work for the Ministry of Justice in the UK. In that court I think we sometimes had judges who were in some way outsourced to us and sometimes judges could "pick and choose" which cases they heard, in fact I think even our permanent judges did that.

It was family law so I'd be interested to know if we ever had a judge that had a similar view to our little homophobic friend, Kim Davis (I think it's time to introduce her name in the article) and if that judge decided that they didn't want to rubber stamp the adoption of a child by a gay couple. Judges never gave a reason why they wanted to not hear a case.

So yeah basically I wasn't sure what was happening so I decided to do a bit of research/ask someone on Facebook. I got some good responses that gave me the details.

Basically she is an elected official, by refusing to do this she can be impeached. If the equivalent of this were happening in the UK and the Tories weren't quick enough to cover it up with another comical story about Jeremy Clarkson helping disabled kids then she'd lose her job and they'd get her a seat in the House of Lords. Sadly there is no such house in the US, everyone has to be elected through some silly outdated system called "democracy".

This reminded me, as I'm sure it did you too, of two similar cases in the last few years in the UK.

One was a bed and breakfast and the other was a bakery. In both cases they were small business owners and they refused to serve homosexual people due to their prehistoric religious beliefs.

The issue wasn't so much the fact that the customers were homosexual, more to do with the fact that, in the case of the B&B the couple wanted to stay in the same bed, (I mean, the shame) and by allowing them to do this under their roof the B&B owner would be betraying the word of God by endorsing the act of sodomy.

In a similar vein with the bakers, the homosexual couple, I believe wanted a cake showing and endorsing their love for each other. Disgusting, two people who love each other wanting to share that love with others, what is the world coming to!?

I reckon if one person from each of the two couples went to the respective businesses to use their services and the businesses knew that each of them was gay I doubt they would have been refused service, their view was just that they didn't want to be seen endorsing that view. Other people doing something with another person that doesn't effect you in anyway can be hard, I admit.

Someone on Facebook made an excellent point that this is exactly the same as if they didn't want to serve Irish or Chinese people and I agree, this is no different than saying you don't want to serve Chinese or Irish people but I really do believe if that's the person's stance, they don't want to serve Irish, Chinese or gay people in their own company then that's up to them, seriously.

They do not share my views, I love everyone, I want to travel everywhere and experience as many different cultures as I can. I'd happily live six months to a couple of years with Berbers in Morocco, Buddhists monks in Tibet, a Muslim household in Iran and I'd live the way they live, got no issue with that.

By the same token if someone wanted to come to "my country" to live and didn't want to integrate with the culture of "my country" that's okay too. I'm happy to let people just do what they want.

Let's let people be judged by their opinions. The shit will sink to the bottom and the good will raise. Those who endorse equal opportunities to everyone will become pillars of the community and those that hold secular opinions won't get anywhere and will begin to wonder if they're the ones in the wrong.

In the Kim Davis case she is required by law to carry out her orders to serve the public, community, society.... She doesn't have the right to say "but my opinion is this..." That's cute, now do your job.

She should have to face legal proceedings if she continues with this stance and then she'll lose her job and unfortunately for her due to the publicity this story has received she'll find it difficult to get another one. Sadly not impossible but difficult.

At the root of this is obviously religious beliefs. The words of Gods, ie religious scriptures, were written thousands of years ago*. It could have been that the words of God were misinterpreted?

*In the case of Jedi those words were written a long time ago in a galaxy far far way. We're not sure how long nor how far but I think one can assume that they're even more to interpretation.

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Facebook, Twitter and Politics (Good news contained within)

2015-09-01T13:06:00.001-07:00

As you'd know if you were my friend on Facebook, follow me on Twitter or have ever met me in person I'm very politically minded. I can't help this, nor should I feel the need to apologise.

I remember about ten years ago when I was first getting interested in politics. I wanted to know who I should be voting for, nothing anyone was saying made much sense to me, I wanted to know who I should be voting for. I spoke to a colleague about it and she recommended that I go and research the three main parties to find out what they stood for.

That research took a long time and over the course of ten years I found out that I am a socialist. Obviously then I should be voting Labour, but no, wait! Jeremy Corbyn is a socialist and yet he is being attacked by fellow Labour people.

What I like about the Labour Leadership Election is that, for some reason, Tories are getting involved in "who they would like" as Labour Leader and why. Err, you're not supposed to like it, it's Labour, not your party.

The way the Labour Party is currently undergoing conditioning reminds me of how Abraham Lincoln must be turning in his grave at the current state of his Republican Party.

I don't understand why we have to campaign to save or even help the week and the vulnerable. The statistics of the people that have died after having their benefits cut are appalling, why aren't people on the streets rioting?

And people wonder why I'm depressed?

I'm starting to think this is a cycle, it makes me depressed so I share it and that makes me depressed.

On Monday I went on a bit of a sharing splurge, I shared loads of political stuff and I think this didn't help me. What's more I know a load of people have stopped following me, not necessarily unfriended me, just stopped following the stuff I post. While I don't need the vanity of having people agree and I'm certainly not going to post something because someone else doesn't like it although I am going to stop sharing the political stuff.

On an anti UKIP page I follow some girl is forever sharing stuff displaying, what she believes, to be racist posts. I often look at that and I think "is this your life?" Although she potentially has the moral high ground what's the point? It's dedicating your entire life to the pointless task of always being right, what's the point of that, you're not winning any friends.

I get frustrated by social injustice, some people think I'm jealous, no, just frustrated. If I were jealous of rich people wouldn't I be jealous of all rich people? What's more I follow a load of gambling pages on Facebook and Twitter, whenever I see a big win off like £5 I always offer my congratulations. I believe in karma, be nice to the universe and it'll be nice to you.

People think they've worked me out and know what I think. They make assumptions based on this and then form ill informed opinions.

I know some people feel opinionated about this, feel free to get in touch, privately or publicly.

But yes, the good news is I won't be sharing political news on Facebook anymore! Yay...

Opinions

2015-08-30T06:30:00.001-07:00

I find it hard allowing other people to have an opinion on me that I neither agree with or can control. I know, right? I'm sharing all my hopes and fears with the world, what do I expect? What's more I want to be successful at something that, just by definition of me doing it, will arouse opinions from others.

If I do go on to be a successful writer, even if I'm the best writer ever, I'll have people that won't like what I write and will form an opinion on it, whether I like it or not and some of those opinions are going to be nasty.

I don't do well with criticism, I don't do too well with praise either, if I'm honest. I reckon I can put in the hard craft to create a piece of work that I'm proud of and willing to share but I think taking criticism from others when it's the finished polished article is what I'll find difficult. Hopefully by then I'll be paid loads of cash and it won't matter but what if I'm not paid a lot and I still get criticism?

I'm in between having made the decision to go for it and having made it, criticism is coming, if I can take on the constructive criticism and ignore the negative nasty comments for long enough then I'll be at stage where it won't matter.

This fear of criticism has prevented me from sharing stuff with others before. On my other blog, the satirical news blog, I've had loads of stories that I've written but just never shared through fear of someone saying something that I can't control. Their opinion is slightly skewed and is not taking everything into consideration.

The trouble is anyone can have an opinion on anything, even if you haven't had all the facts. Whose got an opinion on how the universe was created? Most of us have, were you there? Oh....

People think that having a majority in a debate makes them right. I don't care if I'm in the only one that holds a particular opinion, likes a particular film, believes a particular theory it's still my opinion and what is right is that we all get the chance to have our own opinions, whether they be right or wrong.

Have your opinion on me, I might find it hard to take at first but eventually I'll get over it.

Feelings

2015-08-27T21:36:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it's hard to put into words how you feel, I am going to try. It's long.

First off I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. I want to be treated like a human being just like everyone else.

Neither do I want anyone to think that, after my previous post, I'm on some crusade against capitalism. There's nothing wrong with capitalism, there's nothing wrong with socialism but either of them in their extremes are bad.

I feel that I, no-one else, just me, has been hypnotised (I can't think of a better word) into thinking I need possessions in my life to make it better. I feel that, when I'm in a shop looking at products that by owning those products my life will somehow be enhanced.

This conditioning has lead me to own a number of pieces of crap that I don't need. I have Playstation games that are years old that I haven't even opened. How do I get enjoyment out of something that I don't even use?

If you asked me to list all those books, from my previous post, that I've never read then I'd have trouble. Do I miss them? No. When I'm holding them thinking "should I get rid of this?" I couldn't possibly give it away or even sell it.

Making this break was easy, throwing away stuff that I didn't need and couldn't fit into my parents garage wasn't easy but I managed it. That's where the bravery comes in, not sitting in Barcelona living on the poverty line trying to find work, that's easy.

People have commended me for showing guts, I don't think I have, this is the easy part. Coming back to the UK, getting a job, earning money and trying not to spend it all on shit I don't need, that's the hard part. If I manage that then I have guts.

I spoke to my family, at last, over the weekend on FaceTime. I didn't realise I could otherwise I would have don't it ages ago. I spoke to my sister, her boyfriend and their kids on Saturday and then my parents on Monday.

We spoke about the obvious. How am I surviving and when am I coming home. I looked at my nephew and told him that I love him very much. I do wonder if he's thinking "why then did you run off to Barcelona? If you loved me that much surely you would have stayed to play with me?"

I don't know if he thinks that but it's logical. Him and his sister mean the world to me, I would die for them so leaving the UK and choosing not to see them on months on end doesn't make sense.

I don't think my brain works like a normal person's. I've thought this for a while, maybe 15, 20 years, maybe a little bit less, maybe 10.

My heart desires things that I think I need, this is a deep feeling inside my head, kind of like a trauma that has effected me and I buy stuff to make up for it. My childhood was great, my sister turned out fine, it's just me that's broken.

I have a chemical imbalance in my brain and despite numerous visits to my GP I can't get a definitive diagnosis of this. I had counselling at the turn of the year and didn't do much, I had more counselling in the spring and again this did nothing. The second counsellor gave me a half diagnosis that I'm not depressed but others have told me that I definitely am.

I'm definitely stressed, that's for sure and repeatedly going to my GP trying to use the right words to help me get a diagnosis doesn't help. I might as well bang my head up against a brick wall.

Anyone that is a friend on Facebook will know how political I am. I'm forever sharing left-wing propaganda because I feel there is an injustice in the world, especially in British politics. Remember that MP who had to pay back that money because he used it having his moat cleaned, he's just been made a Lord. Can anyone else see the problem?

Take a look at ISIS, the "Islamic" extremists. There is a deep left-wing belief that this group was created by Israel, secretly. The point being that these people would raise tensions in the Middle East in the name of Islam and the world would be in uproar calling for war against Muslims.

On one of the numerous Facebook groups I read one female Muslim was talking about what Afghanistan was like in the 1970s. She posted a picture and it was unrecognisable. It looked like a Islamic version of the western world. I need to do more research on this but her point was that the Afghanistan as we know it today is an American creation going along the same theme seen above.

On Wednesday two U.S. journalists were gunned down while live on air by a former colleague. I read on the BBC that this guy was raised as a Jehovah Witness. Why is it that if this guy had been a Muslim he'd have been regarded as a terrorist?

I was debating with former Conservative MP Louise Mensch on Friday evening and she said that most extreme Muslims are "Wahhabbis". I know, I'm envisaging the same Elmer Fudd Photoshopped tie-in "I'm hunting Wahhabbis" that you are. Another thing to research before jumping to conclusions.

I've got friends who think we should carpet bomb the whole of the Middle East. What about the people that live there that are peaceful? Let alone all the history, civilisation was born in the Middle East. A carpet bombing of Syria for example would completely destroy Damascus, the world's oldest city.

I try and debate the point that there are 1.6billion Muslims in this world and that less than half a percent, about 8 million of them are terrorists. That estimate seems a bit high so I googled it. Just for shits and giggles.

The first link was from a Christian website that carries an article about a woman who believes that "15-25% of the world's Muslims are terrorist". To be fair to the website their article is balanced and they provide a counter argument from another source.

15-25% of the world's Muslims is 240m to 400m. If either figure was correct we'd be dead already. That's enough people and enough fire power to wipe us all out. I reckon my estimate of about 8 million is more accurate and I reckon before America rocked up with their military bases the percentage was lower.

I'd be pissed off if someone put a military base in my country and strutted around like they owned the place and had the audacity to negotiate and decide whether my country could have nuclear weapons.

Relax, I'm not converting to Islam, I couldn't give up bacon. I'm trying to give you an insight into how I find it hard to cope with the injustices of this world. I can't let it go when I see someone who doesn't have the right of reply made a scapegoat by warmongering right-wing propaganda. There's money to be made out of being anti-Islamic.

My problems are deep and aren't going to be fixed by trying the same things over and over again. What's that quote about insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

My problems aren't going to be fixed by living on the poverty line in Barcelona either but it is a break from the norm.

When I first came here I had to be badgered into blogging, now look, what is it, four articles a week? The script I've been writing for about three years is finished (still looking for readers and constructive criticism), another book has began to be written. I've written the synopsis, I know what happens from beginning to end, the story is there, I just need words on the page.

My blog carries adverts for which I get paid. It's nowhere near sustainable but it is slowly improving. In July I made .41p, in August I think there was two separate days where I almost made that amount on each of those days alone.

Last weekend I was on about .85p for the month and was wondering if I could get it up to £1 by this coming Monday, the 31st. I looked on Tuesday evening after I posted that day's blog and it was on £1.17 for the month. Not totally sure how it manages to make that massive leap, perhaps for the first time in the history of the Internet someone clicked on one of those adverts that offers laser eye surgery.

If I can continue to blog, add people who read it and by the looks of things I can then hopefully I'll pick up enough people that this will give me and income. The blog is just based on stuff that I think, nothing specific, you've got to come on here with an open mind and be willing to let me rant whilst understanding that I still realise that I know that what I say and think is not taken as truth. My opinion counts as nothing if no-one else agrees, other than the fact that it's my opinion to which I'm entitled. I also recognise that others are entitled to their opinions, there's a Voltaire quote in this....

I'm still thinking that staying here for one more month is the answer. Me and the landlady have discussed the rent issue and I've asked I can stay here for one more month rent free and if I manage to pick up work I'll back date my rent. I think she's accepted it.

Three o'clock yesterday morning he was on the phone, loudly. I don't know if he knows I can here him and it prevents me from getting some sleep, or wakes me up. Who was he ringing at that time anyway, late night talk radio stations talking about UFOs? The kids are often up until that time, also loudly. It's only because I'm a night owl that it doesn't bother me but what if it did? They don't even bother to check if I care or try and calm the situation down. The kids enter my room when I'm not here as well. I had a street map that was ripped and on the floor when I came home yesterday.

This flat is going to be extremely hard to rent. It's definitely illegal and along with the unsociable noise they're going to find it difficult to get someone as stupid as me to live here. They may as well take a punt on giving me one more month.

I'm one step closer to getting my NIE number. The first hostel I staying in needs a photographer. I told him I would do it for free if he could "offer" me a job. He's sorted it and now I'm going to be arranging my appointment. Get that done and then who knows. Even if I have to return to the UK I'll be closer to getting something.

Where is my life going?

2015-08-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

I wrote this before I came out here in May.

I've edited it a bit but I've tried to keep it as I originally wrote it as much as possible.

I should have gone to university. I was too keen to join the work force to buy things for myself. I should have gone to university, this would have given me time away from home and more importantly my parents whom I love dearly, the last two months has proved that to me. However you need to make that break away from your family as early as possible.

Obviously they're the people that you love the most and they'll always be there for you but you need to get out and discover, they'll still be there when you get back so just go!

It's not their fault, it's no-ones fault. I'm the offspring of capitalism, I want things. I buy books that I never read just because they look nice, I want the latest gadgets and a large collection of Playstation games.

I've lived this existence since I left school, 16 years.

So why am I not happy?

I stayed at home, got a job as quickly as possible so that I could lavish myself with fine things because that's what I thought I should be doing but when I look around at others I see that other people live with very little and yet are happy.

I'm not sure what happiness is but I do have a yearning to travel.

Two things have previously prevented me from doing this, one being that I have too many possessions, how ironic is that, the stuff I've been working so hard to buy is now the very thing possibly preventing me from being happy.

And the second thing is fear. I'm safe at the moment, I have a steady job, that's dead end and going nowhere but it is safe.

If I leave it all to go travelling will it all go tits up and end in tears? Sorry about the double cliché.

On top of that what if playing it safe is actually the risk? What if I never make that break and then in 20 years time it's too late?

For that reason I've decided to make that break and try for happiness.

At first I was thinking that I'm giving myself some options, I was either going to go and volunteer, probably in India or going and live dirt cheap somewhere in the EU, probably Barcelona, a city that I've loved since I first visited in 1996. I'm hoping that this break away from my comfortable lifestyle will give me a new perspective.

In the end I chose Barcelona. I'm on the train now writing this.

I plan to blog whilst away so stay tuned.

When's it going to be my turn?

2015-08-25T06:57:00.001-07:00

Remember that Irish bar I told you that I nearly got a job in last week? I went back on Friday and the boss was showing a new guy around, he looked English. This was 48 hours after telling me that they weren't hiring for another month. I don't know if they already had that guy lined up, I mean 48 hours is a quick turn around for a job, isn't it? I'm going back in there today or tomorrow to ask the guy what is happening.

In my last blog I spoke about an opportunity that if it works will be amazing and possibly beyond my wildest dreams. Reporting on FC Barcelona. I may also be doing pitchside photography of the matches. That would be ideal because I should have no problem selling these pictures on to agencies/newspapers.

Yesterday the former player Pedro who left last week to join Chelsea returned to Barcelona to "say goodbye" to team mates, fans and the media. Had I have known I would have tried to go. I'm not sure if they would have managed to sort my press accreditation in time but I would have liked to have tried. All the players turned up, had I gone I could have probably made enough money to have a comfortable life here for a few months.

Newspapers prefer working direct with the photographer rather than an agency as they can make specific requests. I have my copy of the Freelance Photographers Handbook with me so if the press accreditation gets sorted for this Saturday's home game against Malaga and I can take pictures I'll be emailing every British based newspaper this week asking if they would need pictures and if they have any specific requests.

There's pros and cons to it though, if I sell pictures through an agency then I can make money every time they sell it to another publication or website. If I build up a relationship with a single publication they'll guarantee payment for the pictures I provide, however if I wait it out and get lucky enough to get the best picture they all want then jackpot as it will always continue to be used and sold on. I think most photographers work like this. When you see a big story everyone seems to carry the same picture if it's the ideal picture for the story. If it is the ideal picture then it wouldn't do it just to just be stuck on one publication.

Imagine being lucky enough to get the best picture of the winning goal and then sending it off in time to make a few of the early editions? If I did that it would give me enough money to live here for a few months, I'd live cheaply obviously so it should last quite a while.

It wouldn't need to end there either. There are magazines, try the postcards route again, maybe get them in a few shops. A few weeks ago I might have been accused of being a fantasist for thinking this is a possibility but it could soon be a reality.

I wrote a match report for Sunday's game away at Bilbao, it's here if anyone wants to read it - http://www.insidespanishfootball.com/160813/athletic-bilbao-0-1-barcelona-barcelona-avenge-spanish-super-cup-defeat/

There's also a bit of a call for photo journalists, everyone sadly has a camera these days so it's easy to snap a story. If you're in the right place at the right time even someone with a camera phone can make a bit of money. As much as we celebrate the leap in technology it makes it increasingly harder for a professional photographer to make it. Yet this is a field I'm looking to move into? Now do people understand why I chose football.

However there are still commissions from agencies that want to guarantee a picture to go with a story so you can still make a living. You just need to communicate with the right people.

I've always had a knack of somehow being in the right place at the right time when it comes to taking pictures of famous people so I believe this can be something that I need to keep plugging away at and eventually it will come good.

I've not given up hope, I'm still plugging away. You'll be pleased to know last night I splashed out on a pizza, Dominos is just around the corner from me. It was tasty and I still have some left.

Oh and a few weeks ago I met a Japanese guy who had never heard of Transformers. Who weird is that, I thought everyone knew about Transformers!

The Book of Jarvis

2015-08-22T09:37:00.001-07:00

I'm starting my own religion, who's in? You can do whatever you like as long as you don't go hurting other people, that's the only rule. Don't ask me to define that, it's a religious text, it's supposed to be open to interpretation.

If you want to have sex with someone of any gender that you've just met while placing a bet and eating a carrot then who am I to say that's wrong?

The only rule is that you don't use physical force of any kind towards other people at any time, unless as a last resort, and you certainly can't do it in the name of the Book of Jarvis, that will go against the words within the Book of Jarvis.

Any person can live their lives in any way they like which is fine, don't attack them in the name of the Book of Jarvis, that's my only rule. How you live your life in other ways is up to you, I would hope that you would have the decency not to steal, not to badger another bloke's wife unless they've mutually separated, not to gamble unless you can afford it, basically just try to be an all round decent person.

I can't guarantee that you'll be allowed into the Kingdom of Jarvis when you die, it depends who I've got round at the time, space may be at a premium.

There is no Jarvis Land that is yours by right just because of your religious beliefs, settle wherever you like and just try to give others enough space so that they can live as well. In fact what I would prefer is that everyone had an equal share of land, nothing too much. Just as long as everyone has enough room for their families to live in peace, maybe grow a few crops and access to some clean drinking water then it's good.

As for creationism and how we all got here the theory on this is ever changing. At the time of writing the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, is massive (like 87 billion light years across or something) and it started from nothing. We don't know how it started. Don't question me, these are the words of the Book of Jarvis.

Understanding the birth of universe is best defined like this. Some of you have heard my theory on this before.

6,000 years ago man invented the wheel, there was a time in man's evolution where we hadn't yet quite achieved the intelligence to invent the wheel, 500,000 years ago, maybe? This is where we are. We don't quite have the intelligence to understand the creation of the universe, I happen to think we'll get there though.

I think that's it really, don't hurt others unless absolutely necessary in order to defend oneself or those too weak to defend themselves when an oppressor is using unnecessarily excessive force, nothing is yours just because of religious entitlement and I don't claim to have any of the answers on why humans have two legs but dogs get to have four.

Also you can wear what you like or nothing at all, it's up to you.

Oh and my birthday, 23 of September, is a religious holiday for all followers of the Book of Jarvis.

Threading the needle

2015-08-21T06:51:00.001-07:00

Wednesday was kind of D-Day for me in more ways than one.

First of all it was the day that I was finally going to get my NIE number, secondly it was the day I was told to come back as an Irish bar made a decision about employing me.

I made my way to the office to get my NIE number, waited patiently and when I got to speak to the woman, in Spanish, she told me I didn't have the right documents, in Spanish. She gave me some paperwork that I'm doing a rather good job of translating myself. It tells me what I need. I do feel like I've made progress.

I left there devastated and angry. I'm pissed off at my landlord refusing to meet me in the middle and provide me with the required documents. I have options with regard to the NIE number so watch this space.

I made my way to the Irish bar looking for good news, nothing yet, the manager spoke with the owner and they're not employing anyone until the end of September. The rugby World Cup starts in the middle of September so I'm going to keep in regular contact with them until then.

On Sunday a friend on Twitter gave me a link to a English speaking website that covers Spanish football. They're looking for writers. I've applied, had a chat over email, written an article and I've been accepted.

I will now be reporting on the goings on of FC Barcelona, the games, the transfers and any other stories surrounding the club.

This is the big bit, they're sorting out press accreditation for me. I'll have access to the Camp Nou on match days, reporting on their games and on what I see.

I've mentioned that I'm a photographer and that I could possibly do both the match reports and photography of the games, they're looking into that for me.

We haven't discussed expenses but they were mentioned in the job description. If they want me to travel all over Spain and indeed Europe covering Barcelona then I believe they're going to pay my expenses. If they're not then they're going to need to wait until I'm making some decent money.

The downer is that at first I won't be getting paid, I need to prove that my stories can get website hits and I need to be doing it for long enough.

As things stand I can't afford to stay here throughout September. I need more money.

I'm looking at that, I'm going to set up a Crowdfunding page to see if I can make this work. Help on doing that would be handy.

Imagine taking pictures every week of Messi et el? Build up a decent collection and sell them on. That would make me enough money to live here, just supplying pictures to photography agencies. Then if I can carry on the reporting long enough I'll be getting paid.

Plus with this I'll be able to get the paperwork sorted that has so far eluded me.

Last week some people were begging me to come home back to the UK. I said I wanted to give it one more month and try to stay here throughout September and return back to the UK having succeeded or failed in October. Obviously if it is me having succeeded then it'll only be a short break.

If I do return home at the beginning of September, I'd need to leave here on September 1st, then the flight will be about £100, if I leave here at the beginning of October it'll be about £30.

If people were queuing up to lend me the cash to pay for my flight then that's a few hundred quid, I could pay my rent and book my flight at the beginning of October now.

Every penny will be paid back so if you were looking to lend me the money for the plane home then get in touch.

I don't have enough money to live on but I'm taking pictures of the best team in the world, honestly, my life.

I've also written a script if you want to read it and give me your opinions then get in touch.

Premier League Twitter Hashtags

2015-08-20T02:44:00.001-07:00

I'm on one of my rants!

Anyone that uses Twitter and follows the world of football will have surely seen the new franchised "Premier League Twitter hashtags". No? I have, they're annoying. Here's why.

First of all I need to start by explaining what hashtags are for anyone that doesn't know. Basically if you put a hash # in front of an acronym, a word or any any formation of letters on Twitter it creates a hashtag. So if I was to do #Paul that would create a hashtag, it's basically a way for you to create a code, like a sort of computer language. If you then click the hashtag '#Paul' then it will take you through to a page where it will display a page in chronological order, newest at the top, of everyone else who has written that hashtag and will display those tweets. It has to be exactly right though, any mistakes like #Paiul and it will take you somewhere different.

Football clubs have been using the hashtags to display news to their fans who can then repeat those hashtags and display their messages to anyone looking up that hashtag. Potentially millions of people could be looking at that hashtag and then read your tweet but chances are if millions of people are looking it up then millions of people will be tweeting it so your tweet will just get lost. The people with the most followers will rise to the top so it won't help your chances.

During major tournaments like the World Cup or Olympics hashtags will have badges after them. So for example during the World Cup the hashtag for England, #ENG, will have a little St George's flag at the end of it, a clever touch from Twitter. Before I thought this was just a little bit harmless fun but now I realise it's been taken to the next level.

Someone, presumably at the Premier League, has put forward a motion that the hashtags for each of the PL clubs should have their club badges at the end of the tag. So Manchester United's hashtag, #MUFC, now has the Manchester United club badge after it. That's fine, but what about other people that want to use the #MUFC? Maidstone United, for example? Being the most self righteous club in the history of football won't get you very far now, will it Maidstone? I think this is slightly unfair, in fact I think it's grossly unfair.

The League and the clubs have basically franchised the alphabet.

What if there are a small band of people who want to use, say #EFC (Everton), as their way of talking, tagging or whatever an event or something taking place? Do they have to put up with having an Everton badge after their hashtag?

People will say well they should come up with another hashtag then, shouldn't they? Well no, actually, they shouldn't. If the Premier League wants to do this they should come up with more creative hashtags than those that anyone is likely to use.

To be fair some of them are fairly creative and fine. To use Arsenal's hashtag, for example, you need to use #Arsenal, I'd possibly prefer it personally if it were #ArsenalFC like Southampton have done with #SaintsFC. Swansea, although they've tried to be creative, is actually the worst. They've gone with #Swans. Yeah, good one, so anyone taking their kids to the lake to feed some swans and then wanting to display the pictures on Twitter will use the hashtag #Swans will now have a Swansea City badge, something they probably don't want, in their tweet. They could have gone with #SwansCFC, Swansea City FC.

I think the way around this is we start up our own campaign. Something like #GiveUsOurCharactersBack and we use the Hashtag whenever there's a big game on. So say if Manchester United are playing Liverpool the tweet could go something like this. "#GiveUsOurChartactersBack #MUFC #LFC Here's my dinner" and then post a picture of your dinner, or whatever, something completely unrelated to either club. If this had enough people following it fans of these clubs will be drawn away from using that hashtag and towards using something more specific to their club.

I'm all for clubs having their badges after their hashtag, look how far we've moved on in 30 years since MS Dos but I think clubs need to be a little bit more creative than just the four letter code which happens to be the initials of their club.

Politics (Not boring)

2015-08-15T12:32:00.001-07:00

I've been hearing a lot about the Labour Party leadership race. It won't surprise any of you to hear that I'm delighted that fellow socialist Jeremy Corbyn appears to be out on top. However it might surprise some of you to hear that there are many Tory party voters who are also delighted by this news. The reason for this is because they deem Corbyn as being unelectable by the wider public.

I think there is something going on here, I think the Tories are scared of Corbyn and this is their defence mechanism, to make fun of him and Labour. When your policies are crap and you've finally got someone in opposition who is shouting from the rooftops that we should spend more money on the NHS than saving a bank then you're going to be worried.

The funny thing is the response of Corbyn's "Tory lite" co-candidates. They're all running scared of him as well. Because he has the audacity to properly oppose the Tories. Austerity is the policy that will define this generation, we need someone that will properly oppose it.

People think immigration is the policy that will define this generation but that's actually the policy that thinks it defines every generation but doesn't define any of them.

The government are pushing through their austerity policies so we need an opposition to that and we need someone that gives those people who don't want austerity a voice. Labour currently don't and herein lies the problem with politics in the UK and many countries around the world.

Traditionally we had our parties who stood for their various classes and sections of society, some parties like Labour stood for a number of unions etc...

Now you have traditional Labour voters who will still only vote Labour because they're stuck in that mindset, Tories the same, Lib Dems etc. We have various parties that come along as knock off forgeries of "the big three", they'll attract a few but we're only ever looking at Labour or Tories being the major party in government. I say major party as obviously in the last government we had a coalition between the LD and Tories, the latter were clearly running the show.

Herein is where I think the problem lies and this is why Corbyn's popularity in the leadership race is so interesting.

This may seem to be slightly conspiracy theorist but I don't think it matters who gets into the power, I think the decision has already been made.

Labour are no longer the Labour of old, they're slightly to the left of what the Tories are, who, by the way, are not quite as conservative as they used to be and neither party quite does exactly what it says on the tin anymore. Isn't it time we did away with the old party system and listened to what the people really think? More on this later.

On Wednesday evening I heard on the radio a guy, a devout Tory voter who was running a campaign backing Corbyn. As I said earlier the reason for this is because the Tories will deem him as unelectable and therefore they're a shoe in for victory in the next election.

This, as I said earlier is the problem with politics in the UK. No wonder so many people are turned off by politics if there are a large number of people have already decided who they're voting for five years before the election takes place.

I don't even know what I'm having for dinner tomorrow (chortle) let alone who I'm voting for in five years time. The guy I heard on the radio was delighted at receiving such media attention, he'd registered three times as a member of the Labour Party so that he could vote for Corbyn. Two of the registrations came under him, he used his real name for the first and his middle name for the second. The third registration came under his wive's name so I guess he could just say it's her that voted.

It'd be interesting if you tried a similar thing with the Tory party. You could put forward a policy where it was outlawed for party members to snort coke off a prostitutes body but then we'd be looking for a new chancellor of the exchequer.

The question needs to be asked is if this is legal. Would anyone know for sure, I'd be interested to know. But now more to my point.

Isn't the old party system old and outdated? It's even worse in the States, they only have two parties. Is that the law or can they have more? Can they have say five parties/candidates but no-one bothers because they know they won't get any votes to make it worth doing? In their General Election you vote for the person you want to run the country, nothing else matters.

Back to the UK this is what I think we should do.

First off when we have a general election we're actually having two elections. We should be only having one but we actually have two. The one we should be having is who you elect as your MP, the additional one that we shouldn't be having is we elect who we want as PM. There's a little bit of a conflict going on here, what if I like what my Labour candidate is saying but I want the Greens in as a party? You can reverse that scenario if you like but I feel the Greens being I power is just as realistic as Labour right now so does it matter?

Those two votes should be split for a start. You vote for who you want as your MP on one card and on the other you vote for who you want as "the party in power".

Now here's what I think we should do with the party system. The person who wants to be say PM should build his team from the ground up. This is the best way of finding out what each candidate wants.

They start advertising and then hiring the people they want to run each of the government departments. I say "hiring" but the money would come out of the treasury and they wouldn't be paid until they got into power and started working for the electorate.

I think the person who is Health Secretary should have a history in health, the Education Secretary should have a history in in education etc. I'm pretty sure you could work this down to every government department although I do seem to be hearing a new previously unheard of government department every week but I reckon it could work, or at least could be looked at.

I can see a lot of people saying "but wouldn't that mean that the person that ran a campaign would need to be rich?" What, opposed to now, you mean?

Anyway no, the money could say come from the treasury. You appeal to them, tell them how much you'd need, show them your workings out etc, maybe receive sponsorship but that would lead to corruption possibly?

You choose who you want in your cabinet and then with them you write your manifesto. Your MP has no allegiance to the party in power so has no reason to cover up any indescrepencies but they also have no affiliation to anyone else so no reason not to work with them, I see that side of things work. Obviously your MP would have his own opinions on way things should be done so may be swaying things and be more responsive to one party over another but that should be too much of a problem.

This is all beer mat politics, it's something I've thought about for a while but not shared too widely. No doubt there are gaping holes but it was going through my mind and so I thought I'd share it.

What do people think? Leave a comment below, or Twitter, Facebook, graffiti my front door......

At least I'm blogging more

2015-08-14T13:37:00.001-07:00

I've always had a bit of a strange relationship with money, compared to normal people. It seems to be the only thing you can't ask other people for, out of pride. I'm asking for people to pay to give me a chance to build my future. I'm in a really happy place right now. I'm living somewhere I love, I'm finding a lot out about myself, I just need to make this last as long as I possibly can so that I can maintain my happiness.

Imagine this. There are two billionaires walking through the desert. One of the billionaires has a load of water, more than he needs, he'll complete the journey without any problem and has enough water for the both of them. However the other billionaire hasn't got any water. They've got a long way to go, say about three weeks. The billionaire without any water asks his friend if he can have some of his water. Obviously offering him money is a useless task, they're both billionaires but he does say to him "Look, there is nothing I can offer you that you can't get yourself, all I'm asking for is this chance to survive. If you give me this and we make it out of the desert safely then if whenever you need anything just ask me and if I can help I will".

Would you not ask for water if you needed it, out of pride? Okay, so I should have planed this a little better maybe. Ever since I got the travel bug all I've done is plan trips and see how much it costs to do them, I plan and plan and plan without ever doing anything. I had to just remove the plaster from the wound that was my life and do it.

I guess what I'm saying is that money does not define us, the amount of money we have in our bank does not define us. Possessions do not define us. What does define us is spirit, character and personality. There used to be a time when that was all you needed to get on in life, now you need a university degree just to get a £20,000 a year job in central London.

I'm not in that bad a position. As I write this one of the many jobs I've applied for could be emailing me to offer me something, then it's done, it's that simple. One job market opens up in September, Irish bars. That was previously closed to me but now I have a chance of getting a job in one of those. I know of one bar where there are two people leaving in a week or two and in other I get one rather well with the owner. Do I not stay here because one of them may not come off?

I've played it safe for 33 years, where exactly has that got me? It's not even as if I'm not safe, I'm in Barcelona, not Beirut! I'm first running out of places beginning with B that are slightly on edge and dangerous to live in with no money that I can compare with Barcelona.

It may surprise some of you but I have, on occasion, made my own decisions in life. No, really, honestly, it's true. I evaluate the risk and I'll weigh up the options and see how badly things will effect me depending on what I choose to do. It hasn't done me too badly so while I do appreciate the love and advice if I say okay, no problem, thanks for telling me what you think but I'm still going to go through with this then please don't accuse me of acting like a child just because I had the gall to ignore your marvellous, genius, must always be listened to advice, I am a man of almost 33 years of age. I'm also a bright, intelligent, clever, creative individual who has his own mind, will and determination to achieve his dreams and not just play things safely because that's what society tells him he has to do.

This is happening and just because I don't listen to what you tell me to do doesn't mean that I don't appreciate it, if you want to help find other ways, shouting your opinion at me on repeat clearly doesn't have an effect. Neither does sharing my blog with others and using it to take the piss, although I appreciate it being shared.

We're reminded on a daily basis how immigrants have travelled thousands of miles across over land and sea in foreign lands where they can't speak the language and have no money and you think I'll have trouble living slightly outside of my comfort zone? How patronising....

I read one PoV the other day that said I was in the deep pits of depression. For anyone that doesn't know I spent half of last year off sick from work for stress and depression. My work sorted out some counselling for me an this commenced in March and ended in May. My counsellor and me obviously spoke at great length about my mental state but the conclusion was that the reason for my depression was that I had things that I wanted to do and because I wasn't doing them this lead to my depression.

The reason I don't do stuff is because I'm always told to play it safe, don't leave your comfort zone, save up and then do it, you can't do that, it's not safe. No ta, I'd rather just go off and do it thanks.

You have all done me a favour though, helping me realise this. I'm going to be doing this more, get used to it.

I was still awake at 3:30 this morning. Sorry if this doesn't fit in with you feel I should or shouldn't be doing. Suddenly the power went out in the flat. You don't know darkness until you see darkness like that, I had no light coming from anywhere. I got a few things together and decided to go for a walk, yes at 3:30am.

I decided to make my way half way up Mount Tibidabo where I sat and watched the sun rise, it was beautiful. At 7:00am I got up and went home.

Nothing too dangerous, a little bit spontaneous, a little bit weird and out there but those were all things that made me want to do it more.

The only thing that prevents us from doing what we want to do is us

2015-08-13T14:57:00.001-07:00

Shortly after my last blog I was getting messages of support. My sister sent me some money and told me to come home. I also got an email from my parents telling me to come home and I know that behind the messages of support there will be people thinking 'he should just come home'.

Come home to what? Are the streets of Gravesend suddenly paved with gold? I won't be able to claim any benefits as it is within six months of me handing in my resignation. That's basing my knowledge on what it was under a Labour government, a Tory government isn't going to give me any money, I don't own a bank.

Currency is one thing but having no euros also equates to having no pounds sterling, believe me, I've checked.

Okay so someone might have a spare room for me to stay in while I get a job, I can then move into to somewhere else and start paying my way but then what? I'll be earning just about enough to live on and all the while wishing I was still in Barcelona.

For crying out loud, I'm living in Barcelona, not Baghdad, it's a western city.

The thing that prevents me from succeeding is fear, if I have no fear of failure then I can't lose, going back to the UK is failing, staying in Barcelona and doing anything else is not.

It'll be much better when I get my phone and I'll be able to talk to some of you. It sounds like you could do with it more than I could.

Still no further on that. Three won't send me the phone for nothing, despite the money I spend with them, despite the fact I can't get service on my iPad and despite that fact they've been fucking me around for over a month with the "we'll email you" and then the "we can't sort this out over email" nonsense. I'm just going to stop the direct debit to them so they'll lose out more in the long run, smart move Three.

This is what I'm going to do. I planned to return to/visit the UK at the beginning of October anyway, even if I'd set up a life in Barcelona.

That's still on. I'm going to give myself between now and then to find work, if it happens then I'll work in how I can visit the UK for a short holiday, if it doesn't then I can just stay in the UK and plan what to do. I think three months is enough time to say I gave it a good go and should shield me from the stick from the people who would love to do something like this but would never have the guts to, some of whom still live with their parents.

Between now and then I'm going to need two things from people.

1 Please share this blog. I get paid for allowing adverts on my page. At the moment I'm not earning nearly enough but that could change. What if you're friends on Facebook with someone you haven't seen for years that is looking for a travel writer and likes my style. I'm not saying anyone has to share it, I'm sure people have their reasons not to but if the only reason is "I'm not sharing it, there's no point" then you might as well share it. Share, retweet and post anywhere you like.

2 The subject I hate and have tried to avoid, money! I'm thinking about setting up a crowd funding page with the target of about £500. That would pay for my rent, possibly a new phone and my flight back to the UK plus my living costs. I have no idea about how to go about this. Any advice would be great.

I could have had money. At my place of work I was on my final written warning, I went sick at the end of April and on that occasion I didn't even ring them, I ignored all of their calls and texts for half the day when I finally let them know that I wasn't at the bottom of a river. I then went sick for two weeks in the middle of May.

They were trying to arrange me an Atos referral which means a company assess you to see how fit you are for work. I was ten minutes late for this (bloody SouthEastern!!) and the woman didn't stick around so it didn't take place. Four days later I handed in my resignation and four weeks later was my last day.

If I had stayed I would have had the Atos referral, had an attendance review meeting where I would probably have lost my job. However they can't just get rid of you without giving you some money. I reckon I would have at least got a few grand, anything up to about £5,000 plus my wages.

Should I have done that just so that I could have got more money? What about Katie Hopkins, this vermin looks at how to be as controversial as possible just so people get outraged and complain thus sharing her words. Should I go down that road just for cash? No thanks, I'd rather focus on being the best person I can be and just hope that rubs off on others.

Now for the good news (if you're still here).

I do have a voluntary position working for a company that does projects bringing people from different communities together. They've been looking for a photographer for a while. Meeting new people and showcasing my talents is the best way of getting a job. Plus depending on how much interest the project I'm working on gets I could get paid. I can also work this around my job when I get one.

September is when the Irish bars start employing and for that you don't need to speak Spanish. I'll have the NIE number by then and I'll be able to start immediately, a massive plus.

Barcelona's homeless

2015-08-12T05:49:00.001-07:00

One thing that has really struck me since I got here is the number of homeless people I see in Barcelona.

I didn't think it would be that much, it's a city right but Barcelona is slightly left leaning.

I don't know, I just didn't think there would be so many homeless people here, for some reason. Maybe there isn't that many and every time I see one it's as if I've seen five because I notice it more, if that makes sense?

I wonder if there is any city in the world that doesn't have any homeless people? I think I heard that Dubai doesn't have homeless people? They either don't let them live there or something? Not sure.

When I make it I'm going to look into what can be done to help these people in Barcelona.

There must be an empty disused building in this city that we can get some beds in and we can house people in?

We can set up a soup kitchen to feed large numbers and set up a way of getting them back on their feet.

Being homeless can happen to anyone. It's not just druggies and hippies. Give people the chance to get back on their feet and they can get their lives back.

Maybe set up some classes teaching English or something? Give people the tools they need to help themselves.

I don't know, it's something I'm going to look into. There are already countless numbers of homeless charities in Barcelona, I don't want to tread on any toes, just help the needy and those less fortunate than me. Perhaps I can help and contribute to something to someone's life. I'll look into what is already here and see if I can help.

Ask not what Barcelona can do for me but what I can do for Barcelona.

How to survive on absolutely nothing

2015-08-10T13:19:00.001-07:00

What an eventful few days without doing very much.

On Saturday I went to get some shopping only to find out that my card was declined. I tried it at the bank, the computer said no.

I got home to find my bank account empty, well I had about £3.50 but what's that going to buy? I started up an online chat with NatWest who informed me that a company had taken money out. This withdrawal is something that I didn't sanction or want, the money was just taken.

I emailed the company and today, two days later, they've finally said they'll pay the money back in but that can take between 3-7 business days.

This is interesting, how can I survive on the small amount of money I have?

Fortunately I had a few bags of crisps, family size so nice and big. For drink I have a bottle of water and when that runs out I go to the public fountain and refill it.

I haven't spent a penny in three days and I'm still alive, take that, capitalism!

I'm seeing how long I can last, I really think I can do this. It'll stand me in good stead if I ever get to a stage where I have nothing. Make what you have last for as long as possible and that will prolong the chance of survival.

Still no phone although I think I am a little further to getting there, Three are allowing me to have a friend speak to them on my behalf. They won't communicate through email but they will discuss my account with another person, the crazy world we live in, eh....

Tonight (Monday) is interesting. My landlord has a friend coming over from Germany so they've asked if I can stay at their friends house for the night. Err, yeah, okay. I'm thinking play ball and then at the end of the month when I can't pay the rent they'll be a little more understanding.

I tell you the grass is always greener. In the last hostel they have a movie on every night, twice (and a half) times I watched the incredibly shit film ‘Vicky Christina Barcelona’, it was truly awful.

However as the two boys who are the sons of my landlord were screaming the house down at each other at 1am the other morning I was thinking I'd do anything to watch that weird swingers film, now I'm like bring back the 1am screaming.

The problem with the two boys is that they're in that tiny flat all day. Their mother takes them out at about 10pm (I know that's weird but I don't have time to dissect that now) for an hour or so but generally they spend most of their time in one room. The older one winds the younger one up and then the younger one moans, oh how he moans. It's not crying, it's a constant wine noise, often high-pitched.

When she showed me the way to this flat she brought the two boys with her. The woman who lives here has a young girl. As soon as we got in the younger boy went straight up to the young girl and kissed her. She screamed at the top of her voice as she stood right next to me. I don't do loud noises so this was eardrum piercing.

Now I'm in this flat. My door doesn't shut properly so I have to hold it closed as best I can and then push the bolt across. If the door opens the girl walks up to it, stands in the door way and screams until her mother comes to get her, I found that out the hard way.

My window opens out to a yard where there seem to be some spices stored, they smell a bit but it's not too bad.

Nothing came from that job in the shop, he went with the other guy.

On the job front I have made progress. I have my appointment to get a NIE number next Wednesday. Once I have that I can effectively start work right away. Right now I can't work until I have the number. It takes about two weeks to set up the appointment to get the number so an employer is more likely to take someone that can start straight away as opposed to someone who they have to wait for for a fortnight.

Now for the words that I think some of you have been waiting for, I think I miss home a little bit. I miss my friends and family, especially my niece and nephew who I absolutely dote on. Having a phone will help with this but I do miss things like watching Ebbsfleet, going down the Daws, parts of London, parts of Gravesend.

Now you can sit back down and stop celebrating that I'm "coming home". I am home, missing things is all part of the journey.

Talking of journeys I'm thinking about going on one. At the moment it's a pipe dream but there's a friend on Facebook who travels all over the place as cheaply as possible. Why not, eh? The only thing that's stopping me at the moment is the insane thought that I "cannot do it" which is silly.

Clearly it can be done. Imagine getting to Asia on no money, what an adventure.

I listen to British radio a lot. I've always listened to Five Live and for music it's Absolute Radio. On Five Live on Friday evening I heard a woman who, with her husband and three year old daughter, gave up everything, went travelling to Asia and set up home there.

She said that she was coming back off holiday from Mexico and was thinking that she would miss it. After talking about it with her husband and deciding that she didn't want to wait until retirement to go and do the things they wanted so instead they were like why not?

Five years later she has written 14 books, including one about her travels called ‘Can We Live Here’ and she is currently working on turning her first book I to a film.

I'm writing, well you're reading it, maybe it'll come true for me one day?

What sort of person am I?

2015-07-19T08:20:00.001-07:00

I came out here knowing this was out of character for me. I knew that I was the sort of person that needed the security of a secure job and that if I didn't have that then I start to panic.

Why then did I jack my job in and leave home for the city of Barcelona?

I think it's because that although I'm someone that may need that secure income I'm also someone that is a little on the creative side. I'm a photographer, I write, I create pictures on photoshop and in my last job I created a parody Twitter account taking the piss out of the place.

The mundane 9-5 Monday - Friday was killing me. I know that I'm certainly not the sort of person that does that, I'm not a cog in a machine that is largely ignored by my superiors. I'm not a robot that fills a position that anyone can fill.

I recognise that I'm an individual, that the pattern of my day can be shaped by the decisions that I choose to make.

So what was I hoping to find in Barcelona? Was I expecting it to be a place that hands out jobs to people that qualify themselves as a "creative person"?

No, that's not what I was expecting to find. I was expecting to find a city with 50% youth unemployment, a city bustling with people looking for work, a city that doesn't need an English man who can speak little Spanish getting in the way making the place look untidy.

For the first couple of months I was expecting a job that just about covered my rent, cleaning maybe, a bit of bar work, something that benefits from the booming tourist industry.

But from there I was hoping to find a job that would pay me well enough to do what I wanted in life, whatever that is, it changes each day.

So this time last week you may remember I had an interview for a job? Yeah, that finished. I was working for a company that sells bar crawls to people. They pay 15€ of which I get 5€ and that entitles them to enter all the bars for the night plus the club they’re going to. They get a free beer and free shot in the first bar and then a free shot in every bar thereafter.

Plus they can use it every night they're in Barcelona. It starts in March and runs until October so if you happened to be in Barcelona for the entire time then paying 15€ for a deal that runs for seven months is a bargain. However most people are here for the week, if you can catch them on day one you can really sell it to them.

It was commission only, I'm fine with that. You can live in their digs at about 70€ a week and it doesn't matter how much you sell, for me as long as I was covering my outgoings.

On my first full day of working alone I was approached on the beach by a guy who, ironically, was wearing one of the t-shirts we were giving out as part of the deal. He told me he was a police officer (working undercover) and that selling on the beach is illegal and if he caught me doing it again then he would fine me 150€.

From this point I had a decision to make, I could carry on and risk paying 150€ without making any money or just stop there and then and concentrate on finding other work.

I chose the latter. I was finding out what sort of person I was, I'm not the sort of person that is willing to take that much of a risk. We'll never know if it would have worked but I feel more confident that I've done the right thing.

I didn't really have a problem with the illegality of it, it's a victimless crime and to any Spanish law officials who might be reading this if you really wanted to clamp down on it you would do. You know who the clubs and bars are that obviously benefit from this "scam", let's not make out that this is morally unjust. I couldn't carry on doing it with no guarantee of success and the possibility of a fine.

Another thing that also had me jumping for joy last Sunday, sort of, was the promise of a meeting with a woman from a postcard company about selling her some pictures for postcards.

We were contacting eachother via email, we arranged to meet each other in a cafe on La Rambla and she asked for my phone number. I told her that there was no point in her having my phone number as my phone had been stolen.

She told me that she regretted that I had not included my phone number, but again I told her that my phone had been stolen, she didn't reply. I emailed her later that day but said in Spanish that my phone had been stolen. That was a week ago and received no reply since. I was at the cafe on Thursday when she said to meet but again nothing. What have I got to do, eh?

She wants to meet but then all of a sudden she doesn't just because she can't speak to me on the phone? It pisses me off. I've sent her samples of my work, even that I normally do football photography so if she could get me into the Camp Nou , that would be cool, I could do pictures of the Barcelona players for her to sell, still nothing. I'm glad I'm not the sort of person that gets people's hopes up like that. I'll gladly admit that I'm the sort of person that wants to smash her in the face with a large plank of wood though.

Oh, speaking of violence I was in a club on Friday night. I was sat down minding my own business when a girl sat next to me. I said hello and asked where she was from then suddenly out of nowhere a hand pushed my head away from her. Her boyfriend wasn't happy that I was talking to something that he considered to be his. I tried to apologise to him but he wasn't having it, he told me to go and stand out of his way so I went and bought a drink.

Hopefully he'll do it again to someone who he misjudges the size of and gets the kicking he deserves. To be honest I was honoured he considered me to be a threat but he obviously didn't trust her if he won't allow a guy to talk to her when she was only two feet away. A happy relationship.

After buying my drink I returned to the scene of the crime but they'd gone. I sat down where I was previously and a guy was sat nearby. I checked that wasn't a threat to anyone and started chatting to him. He was originally from Saudi Arabia but grew up/lived in Preston, England.

We chatted for a bit, I hung around, danced, drank, had a good time and noticed that up on the stage next to the DJ, Philip Bader, was a photographer. It was the flash that caught my eye. "I bet I could do that job without using the flash" I thought to myself. Then it hit me, a possible flaw in the market? Take pictures of people in clubs and sell them to them? Something I need to explore.

Saturday afternoon/evening I did a free walking tour, I gave the guy 10€ at the end. I learnt a lot about Gaudi and Catalonia. Afterwards there was a BBQ on a roof terrace at the top of a hostel. 5€ for a beer and a burger. I chatted with a number of English people all of whom are living and working around Barcelona. The guy who was doing the best for himself was a guy who is teaching English.

He earns 50€ an hour from some clients. He has five students from the Catalan Parliament, he teaches them all at the same time so for that hour makes 250€. That's most of your months rent paid for over here.

The two things he told me were that the TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) thing is useless and you don't need it. If you were going for a job in a school or institution maybe but generally not and he's never been asked. The second thing was, this counts for anywhere, the good people will find work, the shit people won't. Those were he's exact words, if you're good enough you'll find it, it all depends on what sort of person you are.

Those words have stuck with me ever since.

I'm thinking about the TEFL thing and still thinking about doing it, it's just that little bit of security that I need. With that I just think I'll get more contacts etc. I'll need funding for it but I'm working on that and have a few ideas.

I went and asked for work in an Irish bar today. It's right near the Segrada Familia. While I sat waiting for it to open I thought about the story of my adventures in Barcelona. I can see the early foundations of a book in the making.

The sort of person I am is the sort of person that likes to tell stories. Everything that happens in my life I think about incorporating it into a story somehow. I'm not going to enjoy life by climbing any career ladder but what I can do is tell a story. If I can fund that by living, working, teaching in Barcelona then I'll be happy.

One week I've been here.....

2015-07-16T15:11:00.001-07:00

.....and I found a job! I'm working as a promotor for a Bar Crawl company, it's commission only and while I may not make mega bucks it's a start. I'll be meeting loads of great people, it will fund me for a while out here, I can learn the language etc, this basically gives me a foundation for creating a life for myself out here.

Some of this was written on Tuesday and some was written on Thursday evening.

Okay so what did I spend the week doing? I've not really done much touristy stuff, doing a lot of walking around but it is hot, I don't think a day has been below 30 and there has been no rain. Hard for you to be reading this as I believe it's been raining a lot in the UK?

Everything over here is just amazing. I love the streets, the architecture, the marina, the statues, the different nationalities of people. Go to the beach in the day time, spend a bit of time gawping at Gaudi's works of art and then in the evening go to a bar and get pissed.

I spent two hours on Sunday evening in a bar called Cheers talking to a Scouse bloke, he was over with his misses who was from Blackpool.

I've left the first hostel I was staying in and I'm now in a new hostel, it's bigger and more well known. I preferred the old hostel if I'm honest, no-one seems to talk to each other here as much although there are one or two that make the effort.

Tuesday I had my job "interview". It wasn't that really. I'm working as a promoter trying to sell a bar crawl to people. It's hard, you have to keep going, again and again and again despite the rejection after rejection.

I'll find something better and more permanent soon but for now this will do.

I went along on Tuesday night after the promise of a pool party at the end.

I got into the first bar where everyone meets and got talking to some people. We left the first bar and were on our way to the second when a sweet innocent voice from behind me said "where are we?"

I turned and replied "On La Rambla".

As I turned I saw a sweet innocent face to match the voice.

I got talking to her only to find out that she was 20 years old, from Holland and here by herself. Not just on the bar crawl by herself but actually in Barcelona by herself.

Knowing what kind of car crash night we were in for I took it upon myself to look after her. As we made our way around all the different bars and talking with her extensively I wondered to myself why on earth is such a bright and intelligent young woman out here on one of these nights where you're encouraged to chuck as much alcohol down your throat as possible?

We both watched open jawed as we saw people with a long tube in their mouth funnelling beer down their throats. Literally the other end of the tube was connected to a funnel and beer was being poured in. Obviously you weren't allowed to take your mouth away until it had all gone. And this is what I now do for a job.

Shortly after we saw this we left, we never made it to the pool party. We were both tired so I offered to walk her back to her hostel. We she said that wasn't necessary I said that if I didn't do it and my dad had found out that I hadn't he would beat the shit out of me. A slight lie but I needed to let her know that I wasn't taking no for an answer.

I walked her back to her hostel and we agreed to meet up the following day so that I could take her to see the sights.

We met at 11am. First I took her to the Sagrada Familia, an obvious must, but as we'd both seen it and there was a long queue we didn't bother going in.

Next up was mount Tibidabo, it's a journey of metro, tram and funicular. Then once you're at the pretend top there are stairs, then a lift, then many many more stairs. Then you're like "oh, I finally made it to the top" only to find out there are more stairs.

But once you do make it to the real top the view of Barcelona below is simply breathtaking.

"You were right, it was worth it" she told me.

After this we went back to La Rambla and got a bite to eat, I had a Macdonalds while she had some fruit. By now it was 3pm, we'd both had little sleep and had walked up about one billion steps. We knew we wanted to do something together in the evening so we decided to spend a few hours maybe having a sleep or whatever and meet back at 7:30pm.

We did just this and in the evening went to visit the Olympic Stadium and Mount Juic. Again simply breathtaking views.

Back to La Rambla for some pizza and we went our separate ways. She flew home on Thursday and I went to start my job signing people up for voluntary alcohol poisoning.

This is my life now, people passing in and out saying goodbye before I've had a chance to say hello.

Hopefully I've made a friend for life.